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Cute but great general purpose lens

Started Apr 23, 2022 | User reviews thread
jcr67
jcr67 Senior Member • Posts: 1,602
Re: Cute but great general purpose lens

julyas43 wrote:

I say cute because it's a pancake lens. It has a standard diameter lens body but the front glass is so tiny looking at it frontally. The optical elements are probably smaller and simpler than some of the built in zoom lenses (duh) for pocket cameras.

Anyway cuteness aside, because of its simplicity there's almost no compromise to the image quality. I do find quite a bit of bowel distortion (You should have a doctor take a look at that.) and vignetting but still sharp corner-to-corner. f/2.8 isn't a particularly very big aperture, but again, it's tiny, and a few stops brighter than a kit lens anyway. The short minimum focusing distance also help if you want to separate the background with its bokeh --which is fairly smooth IMO.

AF motor is silent but I find it a bit slower than my other favourite, the EF 50mm f/1.8 STM. Focusing ring being electronically coupled, I find it not that accurate nor predictable. Mine (bought secondhand though) is also felt a bit loose than I wanted. That said, it has a relatively long focus throw which I do like.

 jcr67's gear list:jcr67's gear list
Panasonic Lumix DMC-TS5 Olympus OM-D E-M10 Canon EOS R6 Canon EOS R7 Canon EF 85mm F1.8 USM +19 more
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